Khan wants to fight on Mayweather undercard in co-feature bout

By Scott Gilfoid: Amir Khan (28-3, 19 KO’s) says he’s interested in fighting on Floyd Mayweather Jr’s undercard on May 3rd, but he wants to be the co-feature attraction just before Mayweather’s unification bout against WBA welterweight champion Marcos Maidana at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. That could be a problem, though, because little Mayweather, Adrien Broner, is also fighting on the card.

Broner brings in bigger ratings on Showtime than Khan does, so he should be the co-feature attraction even if he’s facing someone who doesn’t have much of a following like John Molina.

“I think it might be a good idea to fight on his undercard as chief support,” Khan said to the BBC Sport. “We put the fight to Adrien Broner – they don’t want it- so what do we do? Boxing’s a funny business. Being in front of his face is kind of good because Floyd will always see me, plus he knows that he should have been fighting me instead of Maidana. It’s not been confirmed fully just yet who we’re going to fight. He’s [Mayweather] getting older I think he’s trying to avoid the guys who have hand speed and are quick and explosive. Maidana, I’ve already beaten him.”

It’s good that Khan is willing to fight on Mayweather’s undercard because if he wants to increase interest in a fight between him and Mayweather, then he needs to fight on his card so that fans get to see them. Of course, Khan is going to have to fight a good opponent if he wants to drive up interest in a fight between him and Mayweather. He can’t fight someone like Luis Collazo and expect fans to get excited about that. It’s going to take someone who is relevant for Khan to get anyone to care about him fighting Mayweather. Collazo is too similar to Khan’s last opponent Julio Diaz.

I hope Khan doesn’t take it the wrong way if Mayweather agrees to have him on the card but as the third fight from the main event. It’s not as if it’s a bad deal, because Khan will still get seen by many millions of fans due to it being televised all around the world. If Khan were to take on a truly dangerous welterweight like Keith Thurman, then I could see Mayweather agreeing to put Khan in as his co-feature. But you know and I know that there’s no way that Golden Boy Promotions is going to let Khan fight Thurman, because he’s wreck the show by knocking Khan out.

Thurman is the real deal, but he doesn’t have the popularity that other fighters like Adrien Broner and Khan has. It would be good for Golden Boy to let Thurman fight Khan so that he could take his scalp and increase his open popularity, but Khan would probably never agree to fighting Thurman. It also would be a self-defeating move by Golden Boy because they then wouldn’t be able to use Khan for the Mayweather fight in September or in 2015.